


Seiko and The Sand Slayer

by VulturineQueen



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VulturineQueen/pseuds/VulturineQueen
Summary: A Medieval-era merchant expedition goes wrong, wronger, and then a little bit right.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4
Collections: The Zoroark Games - Summer 2020





	Seiko and The Sand Slayer

Thunder rolled in the distance as rain poured down on the wagon. A few leaks sprung through the carriage’s canvas roof, creating vertical rivers that flowed down to the wooden floor. Seiko was not looking at them. Nor was he looking at the meganium trying to pull the wagon along the edge of a perilously steep ravine. Instead, he stared into the forest just outside the carriage, impenetrably dark in the dusk.

“Perfect weather for a highwayman,” he muttered.

The driver, a stout merchant who went by Ren, shook his head and laughed heartily. “Not on this road. They stick to the main paths. More prey.”

Prey. Seiko had known his fair share of swindlers. His uncle was a con artist until the day he died and his father a merchant. ( _Just a thief by another name_. He can practically here Uncle saying the words.) Customers, marks. He’d heard those words more times than he could count. _Prey._ Seiko shuddered despite himself. The highwaymen weren’t the city thieves he was used to. They were feral beasts, men who became monsters and killed whom they wished.

The wagon came to a stop. “Getting dark,” Ren said. “Need to swap the pokémon.”

Seiko started paying even more attention to his surroundings as the merchant got out and went to work. The path itself was surprisingly flat and wide for a side trail. A donphan path, maybe? The road ran along the slope of a mountain, dark forest above them and a ravine and river beneath. Highwaymen would come from the forest. That was the only place to hide.

A low rumbling sounded off in the distance. At first he thought nothing of it; the storm had been raging for hours with no sign of stopping. But then the thunder kept going. Not continuously, but in steady beats like breaths. Or footsteps.

Ren reentered the carriage, a heracross now attached to the reins. Water slid off the bug’s dark carapace and fell to the ground behind him like a trail of beads at the bottom of a king’s cloak. “Now that ‘at’s taken care of—”

“Don’t you hear it?” Seiko asked.

Ren’s smile faltered. “Hear what?”

“The footsteps.”

They both sat silent. One beat over the thunder. Then another, and another after that. Slow, steady, and powerful.

A flash of lightning struck nearby and as Seiko jumped in his seat he saw it: a massive, hulking, monstrous figure steadily coming down the trail for them. Too big for a nido. No horns to be seen.

Ren must have come to the same conclusion at the same time. He lurched back out of the carriage and frantically began pulling the reins off of the heracross, his hands slipping from terror and water. Seiko stared down the road in shock, unsure if he wanted another glimpse or not.

This wasn’t a donphan trail. It was tyranitar’s. The mountain demon himself.

The wind picked up and threw cold water against Seiko’s side. He barely noticed. In front of him Ren finally managed to unclip his pokémon after a lot of fumbling and even more mumbled swearing in Kantan, Johtoni, and at least two other languages Seiko had never heard before.

The heracross spread his wings and stepped forward, sensing the human’s tension and eager to test himself. Another flash showed the tyranitar’s silhouette—closer than it was before. The beetle started running, flapping his wings behind him, and with a mighty war cry he took off. And immediately flew off the trail, away from the humans and demon alike.

A very sensible creature, Seiko thought.

He was interrupted from his musings by Ren swearing again, this time in Kantan, before rushing down into the ravine. Why? Why not the forest? Was he afraid the tyranitar could follow? A short scream and the sound of pebbles cascading downhill foreclosed that option. He rushed as far as he could into the forest, tripping over roots from time to time but getting up and scurrying on as soon as he could.

The tyranitar’s footsteps grew ever louder behind him until they stopped altogether. Seiko glanced back and saw the creature’s massive silhouette bend down and rummage through the wagon’s contents. The trees between them were sturdy and dense. Pine needles all but blocked the view. It wouldn’t follow him, right?

The creature half-heartedly tossed the entire wagon into the ravine. No. No tree would stop that beast. It glances your way and your heart stops beating. Then it slowly rises up to its full height and keeps trudging along the path, deciding that a skin-and-bones human wasn’t worth the effort of knocking down trees.

Seiko was safe, in a sense of the word that includes “being alone in a forest deep in the territory of several predators, highwaymen among them, in the pouring rain with no supplies.”

The night was treacherous. Seiko elected not to build a fire, both because it would draw predators and because he did not know how to make one in the rain. Instead he huddled up under the shadow of the biggest tree around, eyes flashing back and forth through the forest in hot pursuit of every moving shadow. Slowly his eyes moved less and less. They finally closed altogether.

* * *

The first thing Seiko noticed when he woke up was the ungodly crick in his neck. The second was the cold. The mountains were not quite cold enough to freeze at this time of the year, but that just meant that his clothing was soaked through by very cold water.

The third was the beetle looming over him. His eyes went wide and he covered his mouth to stifle a scream. The bug just slowly blinked and went back to foraging from a nearby rawst bush. Seiko’s breath slowed and he began to look at the beetle with more interest than fear. There was a damp ribbon around its horn. He could faintly make out writing on it, but the black lettering was difficult to decipher against the soaked, crumpled cloth.

It was probably the same heracross that had abandoned him last night. He seemed friendly enough in the day, but Seiko had no illusions that the heracross would protect him from another attack.

Fate answered his thoughts in the form of heavy footsteps on the road. The heracross glanced towards them for a moment before resuming its foraging. Seiko ducked behind the thickest tree he could find and prayed to the Skies and Seas that the beast would just carry on like the tyranitar had.

He had no such luck. The footsteps stopped for the longest time before an unmistakably human voice called out to him. “Alright, you in there! You can come out now and die swiftly or make me come in there. Then you’ll get your legs broken and be left alive for the murkrow.”

A highwayman. Highwaywoman, in any case.

At his core, Seiko was a city dweller. He stood no chance outrunning the woman in an unfamiliar forest while frozen half to death. Seiko stumbled out of the forest, narrowly avoiding roots and rocks as he walked. The woman wore a brown scarf and jacket and her hair hung in a loose ponytail behind her. If it weren’t for the perilously sharp sword in her hand and the massive rhyhorn beside her she wouldn’t look out of place on the farms outside Cherrygrove. He held out his hands, palms facing the woman, to show that he had no weapons. The heracross didn’t get the message and flew to his side, earning a raised sword and a low growl from the bandits in front of him.

“Withdraw your pokémon,” the highwaywoman’s voice was sharper than her sword. Her rhyhorn stomped for emphasis. It was uncomfortably similar to a tyranitar’s footsteps.

“It’s not my pokémon,” Seiko eventually stammered out. “And its apricorn is with the wagon.”

The woman whistled and her rhyhorn sprung into action, slamming its feet into the ground and sending a rock blasting towards the bug-type. It managed to dodge the first but three more took its place. One struck it over the heart and the pokémon was staggered long enough for an apricorn to strike and dissolve it.

The fruit was right next to Seiko but he dared not pick it up. If the rhyhorn could stun a heracross in two volleys, Seiko could guess what a direct hit would do to his skull.

As soon as the pokémon disappeared, the highwaywoman’s mood visibly improved. She smiled in a way not unlike a persian playing with a maimed rattata. Seiko reconsidered grabbing the apricorn. A quick death might not be so bad. “Now that the unpleasantness is out of the way, let me properly introduce myself. I’m The Sand Slayer. I don’t much care who you are, but I would like to know where you were going.”

“To Mahogany. My grandmother—”

“Don’t care. Were you traveling alone?”

“No. There was a merchant.”

“He down there?” The Sand Slayer flicked her head back at the ravine.

“Yes.”

“Good. May he drown forever.” Even for a highwayman that seemed callous. Apparently the shock showed in Seiko’s expression. “What? He was a toll evader and a moron who almost got a kid killed. Should’ve stayed on the road and given the tyranitar a good meal. Least he’d have been useful for something.”

Seiko could find nothing to say in response. Thinking was hard when very cold.

“Well, come here.” Did that mean he would be spared? Or just executed by sword instead of by stone. “You want me to leave you here? Because I’d be quite happy to do that.”

She would be happy to let him die slowly. That was no choice at all. Seiko walked forward until he was within striking range of The Sand Slayer’s blade. She whistled and he braced himself, only for a gliscor to fly right past him and into the tree line, returning a few seconds later with an apricorn in hand. Then The Sand Slayer gracefully sat herself down on the rhyhorn’s saddle before patting the spot behind her. “Come on unless you want to die here.”

An unexpected mercy from a highwayman.

Seiko was not going to question his luck. He sat down on the surprisingly soft saddle and tried to brace himself with his arms. As the trip went on and he grew ever colder and ever more tired, his grip slipped and he leaned forward. The Sand Slayer laughed but didn’t complain.

* * *

Seiko awoke on a lumpy bed in a secluded room. He no longer felt quite as cold. Instead he was thoroughly exhausted and a little bit too warm. A few moons ago he had fallen ill and the room rapidly shifted between far too hot and bitterly cold. Perhaps he had contracted the same illness again.

The door opened and The Sand Slayer entered with an ale in hand. She sipped it and kept a critical eye on Seiko. “You’re awake.” She took another sip and closed the door behind her. “Thought we’d lost you there for a spell.”

“You spared me?” The question was stupid. Of course she had. Had she not he would be dead and not having this conversation.

The Sand Slayer took another sip. “Yes. But! I can’t have you going onto Mahogany and telling everyone about it. Undercuts my reputation. More people will challenge me, I’ll lose time and money.”

Seiko nodded even though he didn’t entirely understand. “So I’m your prisoner?”

She snorted. Then she coughed repeatedly, ale having got into her windpipe. Seiko elected not to comment on it. While she had no sword or pokémon, she looked far stronger than he had been before he got sick. “No. You’ll stay and help us as a highwayman.”

He did not want to kill people. But would he kill to spare his own life? No. He would not.

“I will not kill innocents.”

The Sand Slayer snorted again, more successfully this time. “Kid, I can’t remember the last time I had to kill anyone. Mostly we just plow the roads and collect taxes. Occasionally a merchant tries to fight back. We go a round. Give them a shot. They knock out my pokémon, I’ll let them through. I don’t want to die any more than they do. I win? I take everything but their food and firestarter out of spite. They could try to keep fighting it after losing the round, and then I would kill them but,” the highwaywoman shrugged. “No one ever tries.”

Seiko wasn’t sure how much he trusted the woman’s promise that he wouldn’t have to kill. It was best to change the topic entirely. “You plow the roads?”

She made eye contact and smiled. “Can’t be a highwayman without a highway.”

“I see.” He wasn’t sure if he did. He mind was foggy from lingering sleep and illness. Even if he still probably wouldn’t have understood. Not entirely.

“You’ll work with us, then?”

He paused. Seiko would not kill to preserve his own life. But plowing roads? Fighting battles? He could do that much. And if it came down to it, he could simply refuse to follow through and face the consequences.

The Highwayman nodded. “Yes,” he said.

For the first time The Sand Slayer’s smile looked more friendly than predatory. “Great! We don’t really wear masks, that’s just a legend, but.” She mimed pulling one off of her face. “Hello, I’m Wakako.”

“Seiko.”

Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad, after all.


End file.
